


Help, I'm Stuck in a Meta Fic and Can't Get Out

by ijemanja



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Tropes, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/pseuds/ijemanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the most wonderful time of the year. And Abed's meta-sense is tingling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help, I'm Stuck in a Meta Fic and Can't Get Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/gifts).



"Do you think it will snow tonight?" Shirley said as she and Jeff sat at the cafeteria table. "Oh, it would be so nice if it snowed. A white Christmas."

"Not likely," Britta said, sitting down across from them with Abed. "Have you _seen_ climate change documentaries lately? They're getting scarier. Sometimes the scientists just sit there and cry."

"I wouldn't count mother nature out just yet," Abed said. "When a character longs for a white Christmas, their wish is typically fulfilled by the end, usually at some particularly poignant moment of heart-warming cheer. Or sometimes pathos, because we all know how creative types love their dramatic irony."

"Oh, I like the idea of a Christmas miracle," Shirley said, "and I will pretend I don't know what the other thing means."

Jeff rolled his eyes. "Guess what, it'll snow, or it won't. Sometimes things just happen. In the real world, I promise, they usually do. Abed, maybe you could join us there sometime."

"Harsh," Britta said, and Shirley joined her in glaring.

"It's okay. I wouldn't usually disagree with those points, Jeff," Abed said, "except you're making two assumptions that don't necessarily hold up. One, this is Greendale; if you think things just happen here, you haven't been paying attention. Two, that this is the real world."

"Uh," said Jeff, pointedly.

"I'm not saying it isn't. Although I did wake up this morning with the distinct impression that something was different."

"Different... _claymation_ different?" Britta said.

"No, that would be both more enjoyable and less complicated. I'll have to get back to you on the specifics, but my meta-sense is tingling, and I think we all need to be prepared."

Jeff rolled his eyes even harder. "Great, I haven't had my fill of clever in-jokes this year."

Britta slumped, making a face. "I think I'd prefer the claymation."

"Oh, something meta," Shirley said grimly. "How nice."

*

Later that day, the study group were sitting around the study table, as they were wont to do.

"Man, all I want for a non-participatory, non-Christmas, _non_ -gift is this thing I really want."

"What is it, Troy?" Shirley said.

"It's a Planet Eclipse Etek3 High Gauge AM .02 Marker paintball gun, in electric blue. Or something called 'dusty olive'." Troy lowered the catalogue to look at her. "But the first one involves electricity, so I'm assuming it's better. I mean, obviously."

"Oh, how nice."

"That's kind of cool," said Annie, "can I see?"

Troy passed over the catalogue. "It is really cool. And I really want it."

"I don't know, Troy," Pierce said, "looks kind of dangerous, aren't you worried you'll shoot your eye out, or otherwise injure or maim yourself in some way?"

Everyone looked at Pierce.

Pierce coughed. "Uh, I mean, cool paintball gun, Troy." He spread his hands. "What?"

Jeff blinked and said, "Actually, it's not a bad idea. You know we're all going to end up in some ridiculously high-stakes campus-wide paintball game at least one more time before we graduate."

"Right? And this time I'm going to be ready. Can't believe I haven't even gotten close to winning yet," Troy said.

"Hey, maybe I should get one too," Britta said. "I've come like _this_ close, both times, and that kinda burns."

"It's fine if you copy me, Britta, you can have the crappy green one, but I do want to stress to each of you, individually, how much I really want this specific paintball gun. I think I saw it in a commercial or really cool television program being used by a cool guy or something."

"Well maybe we could all chip in," Annie said, "and get a totally free-from-any-religious-connotations gift for Troy just because we're his friends, disregarding the particular time of year we happen to be giving it to him."

There were nods and words of agreement around the table.

"Wow, thanks you guys, I was never going to be able to afford it on my own, this thing's like a thousand dollars."

Annie's face fell. "Oh."

Jeff's eyes widened. "Seriously? For a toy gun?"

Shirley clutched her purse. "I was going to chip in like five dollars, but now I'm keeping it. That just seems unnecessary."

Pierce made a disgusted noise. "There's a war on, you know."

Britta rolled her eyes. "There are kids all over the world _starving_ not to mention the worldwide status of women has gone _down_ in the last decade, I heard."

There was quiet for a moment.

"Also, this economy, guys," she said.

"Yeah."

"True."

"Who can afford anything?"

"I have toys to buy for my own kids."

Troy stared round the table. "So you all think I should get this paintball gun I really want more than anything in the world, but you won't get it for me because of the economy. Well, _that_ sucks."

Pierce shrugged. "The economy has been working okay for guys like me. I still just think he'll shoot his eye out."

"Huh." Abed, who had been present the whole time but not gotten involved, said to himself, "Trope averted. I didn't see that coming. Perhaps people do still enjoy a twist ending, even in this age of the genre savvy audience, in our post-Shyamalan world. Maybe that's the whole point."

Outside, not a single flake of snow was falling.

*

It was evening at Annie, Abed and Troy's apartment.

Annie was flipping out because she had just discovered Troy and Abed enjoying a plate of cookies. This was a bad thing, apparently.

"No! You can't eat them, I just made those, and you know they're for the non-denominational holiday event tomorrow at school."

"Yeah, I'll admit we did know that?" Troy said.

"We rationalised that since we would be eating them tomorrow anyway, then eating them tonight would just be like a preview screening event."

"Only better, because they're still warm."

"Nice try." Annie grabbed back the plate, and for good measure yanked the half-bitten cookies from Troy and Abed's hands, before sweeping back into the kitchen to saran wrap the hell out of them to keep them safe till tomorrow.

Abed and Troy went back into their blanket-fort room. After a few minutes, while Annie was perfecting her crinkly plastic fortress, she heard a strange sound. "What?" she said, coming round out of the kitchen, following her ears. It was music.

Troy and Abed were harmonising. And not in a creepy, seductive glee-zombie way.

" _Cookies, you make us so happy._ "

" _Cookies, you don't make us sad._ "

" _With nuts and sometimes chocolate chips._ "

" _You're like pizza and sex._ "

" _You're good even when you're kind of bad._ "

They were singing, happily and sincerely, about cookies. They were actually singing.

Taking the cookies away hadn't crushed their spirits at all. Which was a good thing, because now that Annie had calmed down, that wasn't what she wanted at all.

She went and dismantled the cookie defence system, and brought them to the fort.

"Aw, you guys, now I feel bad. Here, you can have some. We know Shirley will turn up with eight dozen snickerdoodles, anyway."

Troy dove in, but Abed found himself distracted.

"Okay, did you guys catch that? Annie, your heart just grew three sizes. Or at least two, but we'll say three for the sake of canon compliance."

"Yeah," said Troy, chewing slowly.

"Troy, he said my _heart_. That's not my heart! And implying I'm a grinch just for denying you cookies that are for everybody to share is stretching it a little, Abed. Plus, it's rude. Don't ruin the song, that was adorable."

Abed nodded. "Yeah, the grinch thing is reaching - playing against type can be a bold move, but Annie didn't really pull it off. Still, I'm beginning to see the pattern here."

"Who are you talking to?" said Annie.

"No one. Or am I?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked?" she replied slowly.

Troy spoke around a mouthful of crumbs. "It's cool, guys, the cookies aren't insulted you're not eating them or anything."

Abed shrugged and took a cookie. "Good point, right now there are more delicious things to think about."

*

"I think I must have taken one too many pills last night before bed, you know, the ones prescribed for my hyper-virility and over-achieving heart muscle. Anyway, I had the strangest dreams all night," Pierce announced, as they all sat around the study room table again.

"Better not be about me again," Shirley said, "because I have warned you about that."

"No! Come on now, Shirley, I said the dreams were strange. There's nothing strange about a white man and a generously proportioned black woman making love. This is the twentieth century, you know."

"Says the only person in the room not about to witness a deluded old racist get beaten to death with a comically oversized purse," said Jeff.

Pierce threw up his hands. "Well, whatever, the point is, last night I dreamed that I never came to Greendale, and I saw how each of your lives were made worse for me not being in it."

"Oh really," Jeff said. "Did you fall asleep watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' by any chance?"

"Shh, Jeff. No need to hang a lantern on it," said Abed. "The reader is either on board by now, fully committed to joining us on this whimsical ride through holiday nostalgia, or we lost them long ago. Some people find the breaking of the fourth-wall alienating, rather than a charming, quirky departure from the status quo."

Annie gave him a concerned look. "Abed, are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah, don't make us take you on a magical journey through your imagination again," Jeff said. "No, seriously, don't make us."

Britta brightened. "Are you sure you're not seeing in claymation again? Man, I am so totally prepared for an emotional breakdown. I will _kill it_ this year."

Abed inclined his head, and pointed at Pierce. "Unfortunately the only way I see this playing out is if we listen to Pierce."

"Oh, great." Britta slumped back in her chair.

Pierce, showing either a great devotion to narrative integrity, or simply selective hearing, said, "So in the dream I never existed at Greendale, and your lives all sucked because of it. Jeff, for example, never had the benefit of a wiser, more experienced mentor - a father figure, if you will -"

"No, we absolutely will not," Jeff said, rolling his eyes as he pulled out his phone.

"You know, Pierce, I think we would have been doing all right without you," Shirley said. "Just fine. Really."

"Yeah, I feel like we'd be fine," Troy said with a shrug.

"Yeeeah, sorry Pierce," Britta said.

Around the table everyone nodded in agreement.

"Well, screw you people!"

Jeff didn't look up from his phone. "Maybe you should have jumped off that bridge after all."

"Lantern," said Abed.

"Shut up, Abed," said Jeff.

"I can't believe the author didn't take the opportunity to put you in the role of the Grinch, Jeff. Seems like kind of an obvious casting choice."

And absolutely no one knew what to say to that. The awkward silence took them to the end of the scene.

*

"Hey guys," Britta said, catching up to Shirley and Annie later in the hallway. "I'm collecting donations for Happy Paws, you know, the cat shelter where I volunteer? You can donate, or I'm selling these cute little tree ornaments."

"Oh, sorry Britta," Annie said. "I just gave all my change to that guy over there collecting for the homeless."

"These cats are homeless! Shirley?"

"Oh, mm-mm, I can't, this is an expensive time of year for a family with three kids. And I bought one of the ornaments from you last year. The ribbon fell off right away, I couldn't ornament anything with it."

"Oh but these ones are better, look, they say 'Many Furlicitations' get it? _Fur_ licitations. And see this one says 'Happy New Purr'." The ornament fell to the ground, detached from its ribbon, which remained in Britta's hand. "Or you could just make a donation."

She rattled her collection tin. She'd put a handful of pennies in there in order to appear less desperate. Because if people thought other people had already donated, then they would think it was cool and they would do it too. There was a psychological term for that which, if anyone asked, she would pretend she knew.

It didn't work so well on Shirley and Annie, however, who just went off to enjoy the non-denominational holiday party in the cafeteria without her.

Leaving her cheap friends behind, Britta went outside, where people were hurrying back and forth in the chilly late-afternoon air. It wasn't as if she didn't want to go to the party, too, but she had work to do. Charitable work. So she wandered around out there for a long time, like an hour, but no one gave so much as a dime.

"Hey, will you give a donation for the cat shelter? Please?"

She couldn't give up. She couldn't go home empty-handed. Her own cats would be there and they would look at her with their three big, sad, judging eyes.

"Will nobody buy an ornament? For the cats?"

But nobody did. They all just walked on by, pretending not to see, uncaring, unfeeling.

"But the cats..." Her voice was growing weaker as it became more and more clear that no one was going to give her any money. "The cats need help," she croaked.

She pulled her jacket more tightly around her, huddled against the winter cold. "Why did I wear sandals today?" she muttered, as she leaned against a palm tree to rest. Oh, that's right, it was because they were totally cute and she'd just given herself a home-pedi and her toes looked awesome. That was a perfectly good reason, actually.

"Hey!" She held out the tin to a guy strolling past. "Wanna donate? It's for homeless cats, they really need our h- well screw you!" she yelled as the dude sped up and changed direction the moment he saw her. From where she was leaning, she could see into the cafeteria, full of people enjoying themselves, eating and laughing, warm and happy.

Assholes.

Digging in her bag, Britta found her lighter and last remaining joint for the week. She figured maybe some medicinal aid might make the world seem less awful and heartless. The flame was cheerful, a bright spark in the growing dark. Then she put the lighter away.

She took her first drag, but it wasn't enough. She puffed, and puffed, inhaled and inhaled, and though she got well and truly baked, the usually comforting warmth of the THC in her veins couldn't thaw the chill spreading over her heart.

"And so, the Little Cat Girl died."

"What?" Britta turned and stared. "Abed, when did you even get here?"

"The Little Cat Girl died, a poignant symbol of the cruel, unjust nature of existence. I guess I should add that it was a metaphorical death. The hope in her heart was gone, and for someone like Britta, that is almost as tragic, from a narrative perspective, as a literal one." He nodded. "Yeah, that works."

Britta exhaled, coughed, and said, "Are you narrating people's lives now? Abed, that's probably not healthy."

"On the contrary, I have become so subsumed by the vagaries of our cultural discourse that I can no longer be influenced by them. I exist outside the meta framework; I am the MetaLord. It really works for me, actually, because as you know I'm far more comfortable observing than participating. Don't worry, it will all play out eventually - or will it?" He paused. "I actually know the answer but revealing it would kind of ruin the ending. My advice? Just go along with it. Now, I have to go. Somewhere out there, I'm pretty sure Jeff is about to be visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past - who will be played in this version by Drew Carey."

Abed swooped off.

Britta looked down at the joint in her hand, buzz well and truly gone.

It was frickin cold and everything was pointless and just basically the worst. She actually did kind of feel dead inside, which was worrying because A, _dead inside_ and B, that meant Abed was _right_. Was she really trapped inside some unending, hellish Christmasy trope-thing? Or, like, what if she was really just some character in one of Abed's movies maybe? Because, ok, if she was? How would she even know?

"Whoa," she said.

Then she said, "God, I have got to stop smoking so much weed."

Hastily, she pinched off the stub and tossed it in a bush. Then she went and found it so she could throw it in a trashcan instead.

And then she went home. Even her cats' accusing faces would be better than this.

Somewhere high over her head, the first snowflake drifted down to earth.

The end

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to 'A Christmas Story', 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas', 'It's a Wonderful Life', and Hans Christian Anderson.


End file.
